Slow Burn: A Zombie Novel (24 page)

“
I’ll have to take a rain check on that, maybe next time,” Mattie replied. “I promised Chris I’d stand watch for him so he can unload his truck into the garage.”

“
That’s okay,” I replied. “I’ll just use your rejection for motivation.”

“
Glad I can help!” Mattie said laughing as I made my way back downstairs.

Although not nearly as complete as my setup, Stephen did have an Olympic bench press and preacher bench in his basement that would allow me to get a good workout in to start my day. I was not sure how much longer I would be afforded the luxury. Knocking out the reps, I again found my rhythm and the sets flew by. Eventually Stephen came downstairs and informed me that Jamere and Rob were okay and coming over for a meeting around dinner time. His neighbor Paul was also coming with his family. Some kind of security plan needed to be set up, as well as an idea of what our next move should be. Until then, Stephen wanted to spend the time loading every magazine that we had in our combined inventory. I settled in to a chair and begin loading the AK47 magazines with ammunition while Stephen started with the spares for his Beretta pistol.

“
Still nothing from Nick or Brooks?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“
Nope,” Stephen replied, finishing up a magazine and setting it on the table. “And we’ll miss their trigger fingers if they don’t show.”

Loading the magazines took longer than I expected, even with Mattie eventually helping, and my fingers were killing me from pressing on the top of all those metal feed lips. It was comforting to see them all loaded and stacked in ammo cans in the living room, ready at a moment’s notice. Around the same time, Chris bellowed from upstairs of the first zombie contact we had since arriving at Stephen's. Two zombies that were once delinquent teenagers were chasing a man down the street. The man had what appeared to be a small revolver and was firing wildly as he ran from the creatures. The gun’s hammer clicked loudly off the spent casings after five shots when the zombies caught up to the man, latching onto his neck. Chris was unable to get a shot as they pulled the doomed individual to the pavement. The distance didn’t stop the bloodcurdling screams from reaching us. At a hundred yards away, he could only watch until they started feeding, which then presented Chris with head shots. His rifle barked three times and both zombies slumped unmoving to the street. Chris added a shot into the now dead man for good measure. The noise drew in two additional zombies, an elderly couple, this time from the south, and Chris dispatched them as well with hundred yard head shots.

"Looks like things are gonna start finally heating up here!" Chris changed out his mag for a fresh one just to be safe.

With Jamere, Rob, his wife Deb, their two kids, along with Paul and his family, there were thirteen people in Stephen's house for the meeting. Stephen was trying to empty his freezer, so Dan had been cooking steaks on the grill and was working on his third Coors Light. With plenty of food and conversation, the mood of the meeting was light, all things considered. Mike, stuck upstairs on guard duty, dropped several zombies, probably drawn by the noise and smell of cooking food. Mike borrowed Dan's suppressed AR-15 which was much quieter, and did not draw as much attention. A few gunshots could be heard sporadically throughout the surrounding neighborhoods. Buddy made a pretty good zombie spotter as well. He seemed to sense them before Mike could see them and stared in the general direction in which they appeared while letting out a low growl, the hair standing up on the back of his neck.

The mood turned less festive when the television was turned back on. Almost all stations were now offline, but NBC 5 in Chicago was still broadcasting. The same reporter from yesterday was still on the air, obviously exhausted and wearing the same clothes. She sat bravely behind the desk informing her audience that she was going to stay on the air as long as possible, as she and her remaining staff were now trapped in the building by a large group of what she called “infected” subjects. Video footage from a helicopter showed a large military convoy leaving Chicago after nearly being completely destroyed at a staging area near Soldier Field stadium.

She again repeated the address of NBC Tower in Chicago. "455 N City Front Plaza Drive. If anyone can help, if anyone can reach us, there are many survivors trapped inside."

Her exhausted blue eyes stared pleadingly at the cameras, yet you could tell that she realized deep down that help was not coming. The latest reports that she had in a large disorganized stack of papers stated that the military had been spread too thin, completely overwhelmed in every major engagement.

The reporter dutifully turned back to the news and relayed that the NBC field office in California reported that the former speaker of the House and now president of the United States was having a press conference from a police station in downtown Los Angeles to try to calm and reassure the public. As they went to a live feed, all you could make out was a large mass of bodies thrashing about like an ocean of torment. The caption at the bottom of the screen stated:
"New President to calm America's fears,"
but it definitely had the opposite effect. Gunshots echoed amidst the screams of terror as people tried to flee when in fact there was nowhere to run. We looked closely, and saw that the newly sworn president was being eaten alive by one of his former Secret Service guards who was still wearing his suit but was most certainly no longer on the job. Everyone watched in silence, but the evidence was clear. If they could not protect the president of the United States, the country was in a world of shit. The camera shifted back to the studio in Chicago, and the reporter stated she needed a minute and hastily left the camera's view. The screen was replaced by a scene recorded earlier that morning of Marines on the West Coast in action, carving their way out of southern California. With their weaponry, they could get almost anywhere; they just couldn’t hold large fixed positions in the densely populated portions of the state.

On that note, Stephen started the meeting. Chris began by raising his hand and asking the poignant yet obvious question. “Well, we made it here, now what are we gonna do about all this?”

“
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” Stephen responded, and went on to explain how he first wanted to just get a feel of everyone's situation and any immediate concerns anyone may have.

He learned that Jamere had spent all of Monday at home on his PS4, spent the night with a girl, and didn't even know there was a problem until Stephen knocked on his door. The girl, terrified, had taken off for home to find her parents. He had very little food in his house, only his Glock duty pistol and the issued 50 rounds of 9mm. With a sigh Stephen turned to Robert, who painted only a slightly better picture. Rob had an extra hundred rounds of practice ammo for his duty pistol and fifty .38 rounds for his off duty Smith & Wesson revolver. Rob only had maybe three or four days’ worth of food in his house as his wife had planned to go shopping today.

Turning now to Paul, Stephen repeated the question in a semi-accusing tone, which only made things worse.

"Y-you know I don't have any guns b-because I never believed I would ever need one,” Paul, already turning red and getting an accusing stare from his wife, stammered. “I do have plenty of food though, enough for a couple of weeks. The problem is that Britney has pretty bad asthma and is almost out of both of her inhalers. She uses both Xopenex and Zyflo. Xopenex she uses on a daily basis and the Zyflo during an asthma attack. I have been meaning to get over to the pharmacy and pick them up.”

Stephen didn’t cut Paul any slack and just shook his head. “Remember at that neighborhood picnic in June when I told you to always keep extra of any essential medication on hand? This is what I was talking about!” Stephen barked back, his voice raising. "The goal being to stay as ready as possible, not just a liberal drone."

“
Well I did add some food, you self-righteous asshole!” Paul snapped. “Excuse me for not wanting to live with a cloud over my head all the time!”

“
Alright guys, that’s enough,” Mattie interrupted, stopping an eventual one-sided fist fight. “We’ve got other things to worry about.”

“
Out-fucking-standing shot! Did you see that, Buddy?” Mike yelled from upstairs, unknowingly calming the situation.

Buddy answered with an appreciative bark. Everyone laughed, and the tense mood was somewhat lightened again.

“
I’m just glad he is upstairs shooting out the window at them and not running in my front yard dressed like Spartacus, waving his baseball bat like a sword,” Stephen chimed in, drawing even more laughter.

With Mattie negotiating, it was eventually determined that due to Paul having the most food, Jamere and Rob, with family in tow, would spend the next few days at Paul’s house to provide combined protection. Paul had four bedrooms at his place and a finished basement which had a fully stocked bar. Dan suggested a trade of alcohol for guns. It involved a transfer of Stephen’s lever action Marlin 30/30, his scoped deer slug gun and a 6” Smith & Wesson 686 revolver along with the accompanying ammunition. It was quite a package deal for Paul’s three bottles of Jack Daniels, three bottles of Jim Beam and three bottles of Southern Comfort. Stephen knew it was a terrible trade, but he had no use for the guns at this point. Plus, it provided extra bodies with some firepower, and Dan promised to make it up to him later.

The meeting ended, and Chris elected to go help Jamere get anything from his house that he might need. Jamere was also given Officer Sherman's police issued shotgun along with a mixture of buckshot. Jamere did not have much to grab other than a few personal items and some clothing, and they completed the chore without incident. Stephen and Mattie did the same for Rob and his family, moving in what food they had along with some hygiene products and creature comforts. Rob got deer slug gun along with extra slugs donated by Chris to supplement his duty pistol. Stephen also needed to give Paul a crash course in firearms. Chris assisted, having helped equally inept local recruits while stationed in Afghanistan. The scene of a liberal operating a gun for the first time reminded Stephen of a monkey fucking a football, a little awkward to say the least. It was slow going, but eventually Paul showed a basic understanding. After an hour of constant repetition, both Paul and Vanessa could load and unload the lever action rifle and revolver, and were able to at least dry fire them without flinching.

While that was being completed, Dan went down to the basement and jumped on Stephen’s HAM radio. After scanning the 2-meter band, Dan found Philip Miller, who lived up on the north side of Chicago. Phil, Dan found out, was retired Navy and had a brick two-flat that he shared with his daughter and her husband, who was a Chicago firefighter. Phil’s wife Doris still worked at a downtown law firm and had never made it home from work yesterday. Phil and his son-in-law had helped secure the block and were running patrols to keep the zombies out. Ammunition was short, but they were getting by for the time being. They barricaded both ends of their small street with vehicles and were shooting as little as possible from the rooftops. They had twenty to thirty people with them and were going to try to figure a way out of the city. Dan and Phil talked for a good two hours, trading ideas and tactics along with old war stories. As Dan signed off, he promised to get in contact with Phil tomorrow and wished him luck.

With all the chores done for the day, everyone settled in for the evening. Mattie suggested a game of Monopoly to pass the time and owned most of the board in short order. Stephen landed on Marvin Gardens with its hotel for the second pass in a row and couldn’t make the $1.200.00 rent. As Mattie set her sights on Dan, who was also teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, Stephen relieved Mike of guard duty and settled in. Stephen got his first kill a few minutes later when he recognized a white trash neighbor from up the street who was now walking down the middle of the road. True to form, he was not wearing a shirt but was dragging the corpse of his wife behind him. She was missing her lower half and her intestines were staining a path in their wake. Stephen put the red dot from his Aimpoint on the man’s head and relieved him of the back of his skull at 75 yards. That was the first of nine kills he would rack up that night.

“
There’s beginning to be a lot of bodies lying about,” Stephen told Buddy as he sat loyally by his master’s feet. “And they’re gonna start to stink pretty soon. I’m sure you can smell ‘em already.”

The only other action that night involved Dan, who went outside in the backyard to smoke. He let Buddy out to use the bathroom, and the small beagle immediately started barking at the back fence. Pulling out his flashlight, Dan discovered seven zombies that had approached from the west unseen. They were pressing against the cedar fence and if left unnoticed would have eventually broken through. It took the eight rounds in his 1911 and half of another mag to dispatch the problem. A few of them had been kids, and it left quite a disturbing mess in the neighbor’s yard. The noise also brought everyone outside in a panic, and after everything had calmed down, it was decided that someone from Paul’s house needed to keep watch from the west. Mattie finally knocked Chris out of the Monopoly game shortly after midnight and fell asleep again on the couch with the TV still on. She slept as it showed the country’s slow burn in real time, for all who were still alive to see.